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Dropping in January 2023 is the reissue of DJ Shufflemaster's album EXP, which Tresor Records first released in 2001. This expanded reissue comes as a 3xLP with new artwork by Japanese designer Sk8thing and combines the original CD release tracks with three tracks from the Angel Gate 12" from the same year, including a remix by Surgeon of Experience. Also present is a previously unreleased version of Innervisions, which replaces the assonant synths of the original with a looped vocal sample upfront. Climb and Guiding Light will feature as digital-only tracks. 

Tatsuya Kanamori remains a critical component of the Tokyo techno underground scene, initially coming to the fore through the Subvoice label before releases with Tresor, Theory Recordings, and Japanese record labels such as Disq and Reel Musiq. At the moment of the original release, DJ Shufflemaster considered the record to draw in disparate and latent ideas into a fully encompassing mesh - "I would like to show my thoughts and everything that I am through the album. If it doesn't reflect my ideas and the reasons that I live for, there is no meaning for me to create an album. Therefore, EXP doesn't contain just one theme or concept." 

EXP represents an uncompromising and psychedelic slant on techno, with a purist's focus on the dancefloor. It bridges many avenues within the techno genre, from the minimalist, dubby terrains of tracks like P.F.L.P. and Opaqueness, to more fierce percussive works that share a kinship with the sonic movements in Berlin, Detroit and the UK. Beyond the technical, pared-down techno found in tracks such as EXP and Onto The Body, the album leaps into unpredictable territories frequently. Angel Exit carries mystical UK steppers moods as if it were a long-lost dubplate of The Rootsman. Kanamori delves deep into looping digital grunge in Flowers of Cantarella and Dawn Purple, these synthetic worlds enveloping and deforming at will. Bold and as fresh as ever, EXP is an unearthed jewel from Tresor's past for new ears.

BANDCAMP

DJ Shufflemaster - EXP

"I've always loved mistakes; it's the hidden beauty in all art" - Andrew Weatherall

Transparent Sound are the original dons of UK electro, not exactly household names yet an act with so many under-repped classics that once you dive into their catalogue you might end up emptying your bank account on Discogs. 

To save you going down this calamitous path as well as to finally, raise TS to the level of notoriety they deserve, Tresor Records is very proud to announce the release of Accidents 1994-2023.

Formed by Orson Bramley and Martin Brown in Bognor Regis in 1994, Transparent Sound have managed to create 30 years' worth of some of the best electro from the British Isles, despite claiming to not know what they were doing nor how their instruments work. 

It's likely that it's this lack of knowledge that led to the quality and longevity of their output - the pair experiment and tinker with the machines until something pleasing appears then follow that sound down whatever path seems fruitful: "the confidence of ignorance" as a slightly more-famous Orson, Orson Welles, once put it. 

This tactic has paid off well and found them stumbling into many notable adventures, from remixing The Cure to performing during an intermission between two halves of a lecture - none of which they understood as it was in Spanish.

The compilation collects a lucky-for-you 13 of their most glorious electrical accidents on a three-disc set including the dancefloor hits Punk Mother Fucker (a mainstay of Villalobos sets at the time of release), and No Call From New York (as heard on Helena Hauff's perfect 2017 Essential Mix).

The package also comes with 'Windows To Your Sole' from the unreleased white label Transparent Sound 007, other unreleased tracks, and special 2023 edits as well as six digital bonus tracks.

PREMIERE: Transparent Sound - Remanisance

PREMIERE: Transparent Sound - No Call From New York (Acid Mix)

PREMIERE: Transparent Sound - Mistakes Happen

PREMIERE: Transparent Sound - Punk Mother Fucker

Berlin-based artists and DJs Mareena and Z.I.P.P.O throw down a over six hour back-to-back set recorded live from the Tresor basement March 3 2023. Prepare yourself for a marathon DJ set masterclass spanning varieties of Techno. 

Live at Tresor is a new series highlighting selected DJ set recordings from the basement and Globus floor.

@zippo @mareenaofficial

Photo credit: Marie Staggat: https://www.marie-staggat.com/

Mareena b2b Z.I.P.P.O | Live at Tresor - Mar. 03 2023

Juan Mendez aka Silent Servant is a figure in techno history that needs little introduction. As a member of the Sandwell District collective and the label's art director he collaborated on works that were responsible for a global focal shift in the genre as their label adapted and challenged the paradigm of minimal techno, taking influence from other sources such as dub, post-punk, and even classical minimalism.

But Mendez's relationship with music goes back much further than these seminal releases. With In Memoriam, Silent Servant's latest release on Tresor Records, Mendez writes a deeply personal memoir of a 30-plus year career spent exploring and absorbing the shadowy side of music; a carefully crafted elegy to people, places, and times past and the lasting effect they have on the present.

Across the four tracks, Mendez pays tribute to the earliest Detroit techno and electro, the Belgian EBM movement and the wave music that followed, the monumental dub techno sound from Berlin, and the harder, abrasive sound of the UK at the turn of the last millennium; exploring and referencing the genres that informed his later work. Each track name gives a hint to the timeframe he is revisiting and re-contextualising as the E.P. repurposes the styles that exerted an influence on him.

This E.P. represents a pure distillation of Mendez's memories whilst also cementing his place in the current and future sound of 21st century techno; aware of where we came from but focused on where we are heading.

Silent Servant - M-87

Silent Servant - M-90

With Dwellers, language and symbolism run deep as CAIV, a new collaboration from Israel Vines and Camille Altay, challenges listeners to embrace the ambiguity of existence, and accept incongruity as a vital part of the whole.

CAIV was borne of the partnership initiated on Israel Vines' 2021 track, Keeping, and Dwellers delves into the realms of sound, semiotics, and half-obscured meanings, starting with the word-association from the pair's chosen moniker that led to the EP's title.

As Vines explains, "CAIV is obviously our initials combined, and we both liked the "cave" references that it brought to mind - digging, exploring, existing pre-modernity and continuing underground through the ages."

Across the four tracks CAIV use both language and rhythm to create a dense strata of significance and buried meaning - titles like G&ouml;belki Tepe and &Ouml;tzi 2.0 reference prehistoric relics whose full history is unlikely to ever be unearthed, while Cymbalism and Shamanfreude exhibit a joy in word play that hints at the very old and modern at the same time.

Altay explains this further, "This convergence of pre-civilized ironies, opposites, conundrums, conjectures, this is what I love about these great human discoveries. There is no definitive answer - someone hazards a guess that is grasping for meaning. We can only feel our way towards the truth of it, based on the signs and symbols we know and have associations with."

Fittingly, the music itself is deep and reverberant - combining primaeval rhythms with modern sound production and unexpected instrumentation. The opening track, Cymbalism, is built around samples of Altay interacting with Polish artist Alicia Kwade's TunnelTeller - a sculpture they describe as "resonant metal tubes and concrete, resembling an instrument waiting to be played"; again this neophile urge to do things differently leads them paradoxically to techniques that might have been second nature to humans thousands of years ago.

Altay can't fully put a name to this drive: "I feel like in the music we write, Israel and I are grasping toward a language that we both share and grew up speaking, but can't actually write down. It's referential, and specific, but hard to describe&hellip;we live on opposite sides of the country, so the music we send back and forth feels a lot like we're signalling to each other by lighting fires on a mountain. It's a way to communicate deeply over a great expanse with a nonlinear gesture." It is this instinct to transmit experience in novel ways which drives the CAIV project.

CAIV - Göbekli Tepe

Writing about techno is quite difficult without falling into clich&eacute;: there are only so many ways that you can say something about a music whose core elements are forged on deliberate repetition; where real talent is attributed to those who can find the perfect groove where nothing needs added or subtracted to hold the listener's attention for upwards of five minutes. 

Such tracks are the hallmark of Tresor's catalogue, and this joy in repetition can be found in works from Detroit, Berlin, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and more. And it is through this lens that Parisian artist, UFO95, focuses his output, resulting in Backward Improvement, an EP that sits perfectly in the spectrum of techno found in the Tresor chronology. 

The title itself makes an abstract reference to the influence of the classics of the genre, inspiring him to take a distinct less-is-more approach to production for this collection of stripped-down yet unrelenting techno chiselled from the live set which has fixed UFO95 as one of the next holdfasts for the future of the scene. 

Perhaps it is the fact the UFO95 only performs live that had led to such crisp and focussed studio productions.; each of the tracks showcase the artist's burgeoning talent for creating the essential foundations of techno; perfect, looping, instinctual grooves that are counterbalanced by an apprehensive tension from off-key tones. 

Backward Improvement marks the addition of a new name in the list of techno's best producers and proves that while the genre may now be in its 40th year there are yet sonic explorations to be made and variations that are worth unearthing.

UFO95 - Fragment

UFO95 - Gargk

UFO95 - Wallon

Datashader emerges from the shadows with a striking breaks- and bass-heavy debut release that challenges the fabric of our digital existence. Replete with a Dopplereffekt remix, it nods to the legacy of revered anonymous acts such as Scopex, Drexciya and Underground Resistance, pushing the boundaries of both electronic music exploration and its conceptual underpinnings. As a critique of the erosion of genuine human connection in the digital age, Datashader delivers a barrage of billowing subs, infectious electro, recontextualized jungle, and techno, serving as a poignant counterbalance to current dance floor-centric norms. It's a contemporary anti-soundtrack that offers a haunting mirror to the societal costs of technological convenience. 

In a world engulfed by the digital realm, where social media platforms thrive and dominate every aspect of our lives, the enigmatic project known as Datashader was founded to reflect on the pervasive erosion of authentic human connection through various virtual realities.

Artistically, Datashader seeks to critique the impact of technology on human identity and relationships, breaking with an archetype of digital conformity and expressing a profound disillusionment with the superficiality of online interactions through music. Genuine human connection and art cannot be quantified by likes, comments, or followers but rather thrives in the visceral realm of shared sonic experience and human emotion. This idea is at the core idea of Datashader, whose artistic expression ranges from avant-garde composition and electronic experimentations to art, installation, film and more.

Expressed within the varied contexts of diverse artistic mediums, Datashader explores the concept of "technological gentrification", which describes the gradual displacement of human interaction by technology. Just as gentrification alters the urban landscape, driving out communities and cultures, digital gentrification transforms the social landscape, replacing genuine connection with curated online personas. 

Musically, Datashader's practice confronts this dystopian reality, highlighting the alarming consequence of people becoming mere nodes in a network, reduced to a collection of data points. This is manifested sonically by a blistering assault of breaks, recontextualized IDM, abstract electronics and otherworldly synthscapes, conceived as the aesthetic counterbalance to much of contemporary electronic music's dancefloor focus. 

Datashader dives deep into genres and influences which stand for a form of sonic resistance: A contemporary anti- soundtrack &ndash; a sonic mirror of the price we pay for convenience and instant gratification. A self-image in constant flux. No false technological idols.

Datashader - Velocity

Datashader - Sync Out Off

At what point does a new tool or technology become so integral to a process as to be intrinsic? And what happens if that technology starts to subordinate its user? 

By reflecting on these questions Machine Alliance, the new EP by Irish producer Kerrie on Tresor Records, connects her music to the sci-fi origins of techno and electronic music in general.

With inspiration from classic books and films of the genre such as The Machine Stops, The Matrix, and Blade Runner as well as modern explorations in art and philosophy like Free Your Mind and Technopoly, the EP's title takes on two opposing but intersecting meanings. 

One, based on the potential for machines to take over or replace humans, is a key idea of sci-fi that seems closer to reality with the arrival of machine learning and real artificial intelligence.

The second has a much more positive view, one where the "alliance" is between the artist and machine to create the music, a process she places immense value on, being both cathartic and therapeutic, whilst also being a vehicle of addition and expansion:


"I feel that it's a collaboration&hellip;the machines are precise in their timing and I add the human touch (literally) in the live performance which adds natural imperfections, so we both provide something the other can't. There's also an element of growth; the machines get updates and so are always expanding in terms of their musical capabilities. And the more I push my own technical abilities I feel we are growing together in a constant synchronised dance."

This "dance" results in four tracks (plus three digital-only bonuses) of classic machine funk which combine the aforementioned ideas in sci-fi with a deep lifelong affection for techno. Tracks like Ode to the D, and Technopoly Dream display this love through her choice of sounds and structure, both intentional and subconscious, while Replicants, and Human in the Loop project into other genres to fully round this release off as a contemporary example of music rooted in both past and future.

Kerrie - Symbiosis

Kerrie - Replicants

Kerrie - System & Structure

Kerrie - Human In The Loop

030/313 &ndash; Berlin/Detroit, the fundamental techno union. Now Carhartt WIP, whose roots can be traced to Detroit, Michigan, join forces with Tresor for a collaboration that celebrates the enduring spirit of two music metropolises. Referencing the early 90s compilations like "Tresor II &ndash; A Techno Alliance", they present a 12" mini compilation with exclusive material from both cities.  

The compilation opens with "I.D.L.E.", a lost Model 500 track, of essential funk that touches the techno soul of The Motorcity, with trippy melodies and cosmic drilling traversing electrified Mojo freeways. It's followed by another true Detroiter: Ectomorph's "Searching (Live At Globus)", a first extract from their live set at Globus in 2021, which BMG and Erika played on borrowed equipment after Erika's case was lost on a flight. The A-Side stays in Detroit and finishes with "Your Body", an exclusive track by AMX, also known as The AM, one of Detroit's freshest funk techno sensations. She carries on the mentorship mindset by having learned from two of the greatest: D.I.E. and Scan 7. "Your Body" is a classic techno feel swinger, where subtle chords meet drum machine funk in the spirit of early Detroit techno.

DJ Stingray 313 opens the B-Side with a bang. Precisely hacked techno, full of dark funk and that special industrial jack, that the man in the mask has made his own. A total "Dynamic Instability". Magic &amp; furious. The thrill continues with "Metal Goat", by JakoJako, one of Berlin's brightest synth sensations. She provides an introspective grower that slowly evolves into a fast-paced techno grinder, laden with micro shifts and magic twists. The final tune comes from Erik Jabari, a newcomer from the 030 zone, emerging from the Hard Wax peers with haunting modular synth techno&ndash;a feverish minimalistic trip of motorized kicks. DJ Pete performed as spiritual guidance on this one. It's floor proven. An overall cachet of "030313" - the small compilation with a huge techno heart.

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